Lea Ryan's splendiferous journal of semi-coherent ramblings

Monthly Archives: April 2014

Description from IMDB: “A DEA agent and a naval intelligence officer find themselves on the run after a botched attempt to infiltrate a drug cartel. While fleeing, they learn the secret of their shaky alliance: Neither knew that the other was an undercover agent.”

OMG, love, love, love this movie. Denzel and Mark Wahlberg. Mmmm…yes.

The story has a lot of twists and turns, shady authority figures. The dynamic between Bobby (Denzel) and Stig (Wahlberg) is what makes this movie. Bobby is the smart one. Stig is the crazy one.

Their partnership has a similar vibe to the one between Tonto and John Reid in The Lone Ranger. They don’t really WANT to work together; they just have to. No bromance here, but they still work somewhat well together, somehow.

Not only do they personality issues, there’s also the collision of the DEA versus Naval Intelligence versus organized crime. That also made for some interesting depth to the story.

Description from IMDB: “While attending a party at James Franco’s house, Seth Rogen, Jay Baruchel and many other celebrities are faced with the apocalypse.”

This movie is off the chain crazy, stoner comedy of the highest caliber; I assure you. First off, all the actors play themselves. This is funniest during the party at the beginning of the movie. There’s all kinds of absurdity, most notably with Michael Cera, who usually plays the goofy underdog romantic lead. He’s not one of the main characters but he is rather hilarious.

During the party, stuff gets hectic, literally hell on earth. As you can probably imagine, the rich movie stars don’t deal with the hardships well. They’re rather awkward and helpless most of the time. More hilarity ensues, and the movie gets weirder and weirder until you’re all like whaaaaattt?

Very entertaining. Very funny. The movie is exactly what it should be. This is the End gets an A.

We finally have nice weather! WOO! I am looking forward to doing some kind of outdoor activity this weekend. I am beyond tired of being stuck inside.

Last weekend we watched American Hustle.

Description from IMDB: “A con man, Irving Rosenfeld, along with his seductive partner Sydney Prosser, is forced to work for a wild FBI agent, Richie DiMaso, who pushes them into a world of Jersey powerbrokers and mafia.”

This movie reminded me a lot of Goodfellas. It has the voiceover narration and the whole retro appeal. There’s mob stuff, too. I wouldn’t say it was quite to the same extent as movies like Casino or Goodfellas but it’s in there.

The story was interesting and populated by characters who had a lot of passion about whatever they were doing, which in many cases was kinda crazy and/or ridiculous.

Whoever decided on the guys’ hairstyles in this movie must’ve been really angry with men in general because damn. Christian Bale especially. The whole first scene is minutes of him assembling his hair. It must be the most hideous, yet complicated hair of all time.

The ladies fared better in the hair department. I also liked that when Amy Adams’ character, Sydney, was supposed to look like crap, she looked like crap. The makeup artist did a good job of keeping her looking real instead of like an over-polished Disney star. And there was a lot of cleavage. A lot.

No matter how you end a beloved series, someone is going to complain, probably a lot of someones. I watched the How I Met Your Mother finale on Monday and I’ve read many complaints.

I actually liked the finale just fine. It made sense to me. Maybe I’m the only one? I don’t know.

There’s a saying that applies to writing: the end is the beginning or maybe it’s the beginning is the end. I can’t remember for sure. Basically, the idea is that stories should come full circle. That is what the show did, pretty much. I mean, look at this synopsis from season 1, episode 2.

“After telling Robin that “He loves her”, things fall apart for she and Ted and he figures that it’s all over for the two of them, but not for long as Ted finds out from Lily after she met Robin that she (Robin) likes him and Ted tries once again…” It goes on.

So, yes. The series really was more about Ted and Robin than it was about Ted and Tracy.

I did have a couple of complaints about the finale. I thought Barney’s character did a 180 that didn’t make all that much sense. He had grown as a person. All the romantic sincerity he’d picked up just flew out the window.

They tried to redeem him at the very end, but it was too little, too late. He should’ve at least ended up becoming a more sophisticated version of his previous self or something. The devolution felt cheap and forced.

I also didn’t really like the cliché that Robin became toward the end. Lonely spinster with too many dogs? Girl, please. How boring is that? How one-dimensional? It sucked every bit of her cool out of the room.

As for the rest of the story, I was okay with it. Marshall and Lily – good, Ted – fine. The kids were funny. Fast-forwarding through everyone’s lives was a little jarring, especially when the mother died. That was sad. Apparently there was some foreshadowing to this but I totally missed it.